All of America was watching Barack Obama on Jan. 20 as he promised to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." But few thought that, within a month, controversy would arise over the Constitution's census clause.

On Feb. 23, a federal court will consider the latest attempt to secularize America, led by militant atheist lawyer Michael Newdow. His lawsuit, Newdow v. Roberts, seeks to purge all references to God from presidential inaugurations.

There's something in the air. It's the smell of roasted pork. President Obama heralded the signing of the trillion-dollar "stimulus" bill in Denver and promoted his massive mortgage entitlement expansion in Mesa, Ariz., at tightly controlled campaign events.

It is ironic to the point of absurdity that leftists could ever complain about conservatives threatening their liberties. Now back in power, they're in a full sprint to grab power and reduce our liberties.

After a month in complete control of the federal government, Democrats in Congress and the White House have quickly dispensed with any notion that we have entered into a new post-partisan era of governance.

Rather than making the announcement in a televised address to the nation, as his predecessor did with the surge in Iraq, this commander in chief had his press secretary hand out a piece of paper. No Oval Office. No questions from the press. Just a sheet of paper.

Thu, Feb 19, 2009

President Obama’s massive mortgage-bailout plan is nothing more than a thinly disguised entitlement program that redistributes income from the responsible 92 percent of home-owning mortgage holders who pay their bills on time to the irresponsible defaulters who bought more than they could ever afford.

Having routed the Taliban, liberated millions, midwived a (Sharia-supreme) constitution, assisted in elections, propped up a government and routed the Taliban some more, all the United States needs now to win victory in Afghanistan is to win the "trust" of the Afghan people.

As the Democrat-dominated House and Senate thoughtfully passed judgment on a 1,100-page "stimulus" bill that Sen. Frank Lautenberg admitted no one would read before the vote, the media elite were positively giddy.

Why are conservatives and liberals not united in defending free speech? The estimable Bret Stephens, in his Wall Street Journal column this week, raises the question and suggests conservatives and liberals give the matter some thought.

There is something piquant about a congressman summoning others up from self-interestedness, and it is mysterious whose interests, other than those of their shareholders, corporations are supposed to be controlled by.

If one thing was clear throughout the 2008 election, it was that the public was sick of politics as usual in Washington. That’s why we saw both political parties offering their vision of change for the country.

In the rush to get a new spending bill out of the congress as soon as possible, proponents of the massive bailout seem to have overlooked a fundamental point: the government cannot possibly cure what ails the American people by pouring more money on the problem.

"Has anyone noticed that it's taking the president longer to select the White House dog than to pick his Cabinet?" writes Inside the Beltway reader J. Griffin Crump of Alexandria. "Could it be because he will feel obligated to keep the dog?"

Fresh off the trillion-dollar porkulus bill signing in Denver, President Obama immediately launched into his next New Raw Deal expansion: a massive mortgage entitlement program forcing lenders to refinance at an initial cost of $50 billion to $100 billion.

"Speak truth to power," a phrase of Quaker origins adopted by campus radicals, Hollywood gadflies and establishment journalists, has become shorthand for bravely criticizing government, big corporations and other stereotypical villains.

The so-called "stimulus" President Obama signed Tuesday is so unwieldy it had to be posted in two PDFs on the House Appropriations Committee's Website along with another two containing an "explanatory statement."

On Monday, after Richland County, S.C., Sheriff Leon Lott announced that he did not have enough evidence to arrest Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps for smoking marijuana at a November party in Columbia, the gold medalist issued a statement of regret.

The big story last week was the incredible Congressional rush to pass a bill that was more than a thousand pages long in just two days-- after which it sat on the President's desk for three days while the Obamas were away on a holiday.

Noted historian and best-selling author James Swanson and his wife, Andrea, invited guests into their Capitol Hill home over the weekend to celebrate the release of a new book about Abraham Lincoln by former senator and 1972 presidential candidate George McGovern.

It is, as Robert Rector, identified by the Times of London as one of the architects of Clinton's 1996 reform bill, a welfare spendathon that would amount to the largest one-year increase in government handouts in American history.

Just for beans, I Googled "free enterprise," then clicked on "news." Results: 11,303. Tried the same thing with "private business." This time: 131,097. Ah, but "news" with "federal government" as the search item: 272,332.

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve probably heard it a hundred times – in politics, perception is reality. In the age of Obama, that is more true than ever. Facts don’t always matter so much in politics. It’s more about image.

Thanks to former Lieutenant Governor of New York Betsy McCaughey and her recent essay on Bloomberg.com entitled "Ruin Your Health with the Obama Stimulus Plan," we know of another problem with the just-passed stimulus bill, one that may threaten the lives of many Americans.

Addressing the Democratic Party faithful last week in Williamsburg, Virginia, President Barack Obama brought the house down with a now-famous bit of political sarcasm about the stimulus package now emerging from the congressional laws-and-sausages-making mill.

This last week through informal surveys on my blog and social networking pages I asked the public what the United States government had done to its citizens in ramming the partisan stimulus package through votes and preparing for it the President's desk.

If you placed a bet during the presidential campaign season on whether Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were serious about hitting the ground running when they took over Washington, you probably have extra change in your pocket.